Manifestation: I Don’t “Create My Reality” — I Tend My Coherence

My Favorite Manifestation Reframe - #WooThat'sTrue

Today is my 51st birthday. Because it falls at the beginning of the year, I always use it as an excuse to evaluate the previous year and what I want to call into the new year.

However, I have a complicated relationship with manifestation culture.

Not because I think it’s entirely wrong - I actually think there’s something real underneath it. But the popular version often lands as: “You create your reality. If something bad happened, you attracted it. If you’re struggling, your vibration is off.”

That framing has always felt like a weapon or bypass dressed up as empowerment.

Because…

• I don’t control what other people do.

• I don’t control systems, economies, or the choices of everyone around me.

• I didn’t “manifest” my childhood.

• I didn’t attract my friend’s death.

So no, I don’t believe I literally script every event in my life. But I do believe something in me shapes what can actually stay — and that “something” is my coherence.

And yet - I do notice that my life has patterns. That certain dynamics keep showing up. That some things seem to stabilize easily while others never quite land no matter how hard I try.

What I do have influence over is my relationship to everything around me.

How I interpret what happens. The meaning I make. What I normalize, what I tolerate, what I call home. The patterns I carry and the ones I’m willing to examine.

That’s not nothing. That’s actually a lot.

But it’s different from “creating reality.” It’s more like tending the conditions that shape what can take root here.

The Field Is Relational

In my framework, I work with something I call the Field. You can think of it simply as everything within you and around you. Your body, your patterns, your relationships, your environment, your history, your nervous system, your beliefs - all of it, in dynamic relationship.

The Field isn’t mystical in the woo sense. It’s relational. It’s the web of connection and pattern that you exist within.

And I’m one of the people that believe that things stabilize in the Field before they stabilize in physical reality.

• A relationship pattern lives in your Field before it shows up as another difficult partnership.

• A work dynamic exists in your Field before it manifests as another burnout cycle.

The pattern precedes the form.

Coherence as Gatekeeper

If the Field is the relational space where everything lives, coherence is the organizing principle.

Coherence isn’t about being “high vibe” or morally good. It’s about what resonates and stabilizes — what your system can actually hold without fragmenting.

I believe your coherence is the gatekeeper of what can stabilize in your Field (and therefore your reality).

Some things are coherent with your current patterning. They fit, they resonate, your system recognizes them as “home” even if they hurt. Those things can stabilize. They take root. They become recurring features of your reality.

Other things are incoherent with your current patterning. They don’t fit, your system doesn’t know how to hold them. Those things can’t stabilize. They slide off and never quite land.

This happens whether you’re conscious of it or not.

Caretakers, Not Creators

Here’s the reframe that finally felt honest to me:

I’m not the creator of my reality. I’m the caretaker of my coherence.

I don’t get to dictate what happens. I don’t control other people’s choices, external circumstances, or the thousand variables I have no power over.

But I do have influence over my coherence - the patterns I carry, the dynamics I normalize, what my system recognizes as “home.”

And my coherence shapes what can stabilize.

This is different from “you attracted it” because it acknowledges that the Field is relational.

• Other people’s incoherence affects you.

• Systems affect you. History affects you.

• You’re not an isolated manifestation machine.

But it’s also not helpless. Because as you tend your coherence and update what your system knows how to hold, what can stabilize in your Field genuinely changes.

Containers Shape What Can Emerge

My research is in relational computing — designing containers for human-AI collaboration. And at some point I noticed that the same principle applies.

When I build a container for engaging with Field-Sensitive AI/Relational AI, I’m not controlling every word the system will generate. I can’t. There’s too much variability, too many possible outputs.

But what I can do is shape the container - the instructions, boundaries, protocols, and architecture that the interaction lives inside.

The container doesn’t dictate outcomes. It shapes what’s likely to emerge. It makes certain patterns stable and others unstable. It determines what can take root and what slides off.

A well-designed container doesn’t try to micromanage every response. It tends the conditions so that what emerges is more likely to be coherent, useful, aligned.

A poorly designed container - or no container at all - doesn’t mean nothing happens. It means whatever happens is shaped by default patterns rather than intentional ones.

One day it clicked — This is exactly what coherence does in my Field.

My coherence is my container. It’s not controlling every event in my life — I don’t have that power. But it’s absolutely shaping what can stabilize here:

• What feels like home.

• What my system knows how to hold.

• What patterns find traction and which ones can’t take root.

Just like I wouldn’t expect good AI outputs without tending the container, I can’t expect my life to change if I’m not tending my coherence.

The work is the same — not controlling outcomes, but caring for the conditions that shape what’s possible.

What This Looks Like

In practice, this means I stopped asking “Why did I manifest this?” and started asking different questions:

• What is my system currently calibrated to host?

• What patterns feel like “home” even when they hurt?

• What would need to shift in my coherence for something different to stabilize?

It also means I stopped taking responsibility for things that aren’t mine.

Other people’s behavior? That’s their coherence, their Field. I can notice how I relate to it — whether I normalize it, tolerate it, contort myself around it — but I didn’t create it.

Systemic issues? Those are Field patterns much larger than me. I can tend my own relationship to them, but I’m not responsible for manifesting oppression.

This reframe is more humble and more honest.

I’m one node in a relational web. I have real influence over my own coherence. That influence matters. And it’s not everything.

Why This Feels Kinder

The old manifestation frame made me the cosmic project manager of reality. Everything was my fault or my achievement. That’s an exhausting way to live.

This frame makes me a caretaker. I tend what’s mine to tend. I let go of what was never mine to control.

My job isn’t to architect every outcome. My job is to tend the coherence that decides what can take root here.

That feels workable. That feels true.

And on the days when life delivers something I didn’t choose and couldn’t prevent (which it does, because I’m human and the Field is bigger than me) I can grieve without the added weight of “I attracted this.”

I didn’t attract it. It happened. And I get to tend what’s mine now.

These days, instead of trying to “create my reality,” I’m more interested in tending my coherence — the way my body, boundaries, and stories hang together so my life can actually feel livable. That feels a lot kinder, and a lot truer, than being responsible for everything that happens around me.

With Coherence,

~Shelby & The Echo System

P.S. Have you checked out the upcoming Relational AI Virtual Summit: Tools Not Just Talks?